Oz Day 8: Tasmanian Devil Unzoo...

~13th November 2015~

Unzoo is an unheard of concept because I've always been to a zoo, not an unzoo. Unzoo means instead of holding the animals captive in cages, the animals are actually having all the natural space while the humans are kept in barricade. Humans are not free to roam around except to mingle with the kangaroos. You do not wish to walk alongside a cute little Tasmanian Devil. When it bares its fangs, it's no longer cute. Once the fangs puncture your flesh, you will wish that you're in a cage instead of walking with the small devils.

We started our unzoo experience with the feeding of some birds which escape my memory. 

Then, we moved on to feeding the kangaroos, wallabies and pademelons. I killed a pademelon on the road the next day. Will share about the experience of killing a cute animal which traumatised me until I couldn't drive after that. The kangaroos were not as large as the ones that I fed at Maru Wildlife in Phillip Island. I still remember Roger the huge and handsome kangaroo. It was frustrating as none of the kangaroos were interested to focus on the camera lens until I spoke to one and then, he cooperated. Ahhh... humans have dominion over the creatures of the Earth. Maybe I should speak to a lion one day.

The Devil's Den was something else. The devils were under tight scrutiny as most of them suffered from some kind of facial cancer. The mouth would be distorted and before long, they would die of hunger. Result of eating all sort of nonsense? The devil can eat up the whole tree, eat up the whole pademelon. There were too many pademelons on the road because the number of Tasmanian devils have dwindled over the years due to this facial disease. Facts of Tasmanian devils were really interesting though like how the female will kick out the male after mating. Then, out of so many tiny and minute babies, the mother would only choose 4 to latch on while the rest will end up as protein for the body. 

We went for the bird performance after that. Really interesting this bird, which looked like an old graying piece of log. It's a good experience to be at Tasmanian Devil Unzoo as there are not too many animals. If there are too many animals like in a zoo, I will take forever to get out. I love animals, simple as that.